by Marc Secchia
“Aye, Master Jo’el.” The young scholar bowed deeply, and departed at once.
Master Jo’el raised his hand. “Hualiama …”
She whispered, “I must go after Inniora. It’s my fault they took her, Master Jo’el.”
“You must rescue the Dragon.”
In a voice rife with bitterness, Lia muttered, “I’ve spent three months trying to work out how to move a mountain, Master. Should I move the mountain, I must bargain with Ianthine, a Maroon Dragoness who is a master of what Amaryllion calls a vile and twisted form of magic. And what part has the Tourmaline Dragon to play in this? He will thank us and fly away.”
Jo’el clapped his hands together. “By the Black Dragon’s own wings, who is Amaryllion?”
Lia bit her tongue. Oh no. Mercy … could she keep no secrets?
Tell him, little mouse. It is time.
The Master’s eyes flickered as though he, too, had heard the Ancient Dragon’s voice.
“Amaryllion lives beneath Ha’athior Island, Master,” said Hualiama, quavering of voice and heart. “He is the last of his kind, one of the Ancient Dragons.”
A bony finger stabbed toward her. “You know an Ancient Dragon?”
“He’s my friend.”
Master Jo’el’s expression seemed frozen somewhere between wanting to tell her off for a childish fantasy, and a compulsive desire to believe. The other Masters had no such reservations as they collected their respective jaws from somewhere in the region of the floor, amidst a chorus of undignified spluttering.
At length Jo’el asked, “Tell me, did this Ancient Dragon reveal anything more about the prophecy?”
Lia nodded. “He said, ‘The third great race of the Island-World will rise from the shadows. That is what Ra’aba fears.’”
If possible, their gathering grew even stiller as each person present tried to imagine what this statement might portend. The royal ward knew that every Master present wondered what manner of woman they had invited into their midst.
Hualiama answered their regard fire for fire. She refused to apologise for who she was. Let them splutter. Let Lia evince the courage of one who had befriended the mightiest of Dragons!
“Speak, Lia,” Jo’el commanded.
Lia held her audience spellbound as she recounted every detail of Amaryllion’s words. Mighty was the mental and physical beard-scratching of these monks, she thought with a smile. Even she sometimes felt as though she walked amidst dreams and visions.
After she had spoken, Master Jo’el noted, “I don’t believe a comet is due for another handful of years, Hualiama, but not all such portents are signalled. Our path is clear. You will ask the Tourmaline Dragon to find this Ianthine, and to return here once he learns the truth of your parentage. We will rally the monasteries and seek to alert Sapphurion. After that we find our King, and lay our plans to overthrow Ra’aba.” Unexpectedly, the dour monk chuckled, “What could be simpler?”
Flicker said, “A shame we can’t recruit a Brown Dragon to rescue Grandion, Lia–if one trapped him, surely another can blast him out?”
“No,” Lia said thoughtfully. “We need to secure the Dragon’s obligation to our cause. The scrolls of Dragon lore I read suggest that a life-debt holds great weight in Dragon society. That is, if he doesn’t consider it his duty to blast me for being on Ha’athior–oh. Blast … aye!”
Hualiama startled everyone, including herself, by leaping to her feet with a shout of triumph. Somewhat sheepishly, she found her seat again. Master Jo’el threw her a pointed look.
“Hydrogen bomb,” she blurted out.
“What’s the wretched girl talking about, Flicker?” Ja’al winked at the dragonet.
Flicker shrugged. “Been raiding the berry wine again, Hualiama?”
She knew he was referring to her flirtation with Grandion–the flirtation of a moth with a candle-flame. Green is the colour of jealousy, dragonet, she growled.
To the monks, Hualiama said, “I was thinking about how dangerously volatile hydrogen gas is.” Their blank looks only made her press on doggedly, “So, I thought … what if we made a long balloon and stuffed it down the tunnel, filled it with hydrogen, and then just blew the side off the mountain?”
“Brilliant!” crowed Ja’al.
Flicker beamed at her, showing every one of his tiny fangs. “You’re a genius, Lia. That Dragon had better have somewhere to take cover, though.”
“And you’d better have a very, very long fuse,” said Master Jo’el. “Or, run very fast.”
* * * *
“So, Human girl, let me understand the flight of your thoughts,” said Grandion, not long after the meeting concluded. “You propose to blow up this mountain with me still inside. If I survive, you want me speak to a mad Dragoness on your behalf, and find out the terrible secret of why you remember being raised by Dragons on Gi’ishior–a secret which might spell the end of all Dragons, if Ra’aba is right?”
“That’s about it,” said Lia, miserably. The incredulity in his voice was unmistakable. Mercy. Now she wished she had been less honest with him.
“In exchange for undertaking this crazy quest, you will rescue me?”
“Aye–no. I will rescue you anyway. After that, you have a free choice, Grandion.”
“Oh, a free choice? Your Highness is exceedingly kind.” His sarcasm stung, delivered with all the rich nuance of a Dragon’s vocal capability. “Perhaps you’re hoping the fabled draconic oath of obligation will force me to accede to your request? Did you read that in an old scroll somewhere?” Lia grimaced, about to reply, but Grandion cut in, “Girl, Dragons are creatures of high intelligence. I am not some stupid rock-dwelling lizard to be led about by the likes of you!”
His pronouncement came accompanied by a roar of fire which heated the rock she stood upon. Sweat pearled upon her brow. She must stink of fear; her courage, winged away to another Island.
Lia cried, “Grandion, you’re taking this entirely the wrong way.”
“Am I?”
“You could try trusting me! I’ve cared for you for three months!”
Ungrateful, despicable beast! She had to make him agree! Aye, her words had been less than eloquent. They had been desperate and broken–but surely, even this dim-witted lump of a Dragon could grasp the depths of her need? The sweep of events that drove her to stand upon a forbidden Island, that drove her to rise again and again above the murderous designs of Ra’aba and his minions? The grief of a family lost and now a friend kidnapped?
“Then why insult and threaten me, Human girl?” growled the Dragon, more puzzled than menacing. “You already hold my life in your paw. Do you not possess the power to leave me here?”
Heartache and loss abounded in her life, and now Lia faced more. The glut of her misery and woe would overspill a terrace lake. She who thought she knew Dragons … was a prize ralti sheep. Lia had misread Grandion and crash-landed the Dragonship of her hope on the rocks of his oh-so-Dragonish stubbornness and pride.
Naked despair thickened her voice as Hualiama replied, “If you knew me at all, Grandion, you’d understand that no power exists in this Island-World that could persuade me to abandon you to die beneath this mountain.”
Her words seeped away and returned to spark a roaring in her ears. Lia searched her deepest feelings. She saw ripples perturbing the magical veil of the Island-World, concentric circles diving inward and expanding outward simultaneously, their consequence, cataclysmic.
Even the silence held its breath.
She must speak her heart. Slowly, she added, “Grandion, you once spared my life. Therefore, I swear upon the sacred Spirits of the Ancient Dragons, and all that is dear to me, that I shall devote my life to succour yours, o mighty Tourmaline Dragon, and I promise to protect the Dragonkind against whatever terrible fate the future may hold.”
An overpowering stillness seemed to amplify around her oath, a power of truth she had never known existed. Thoug
h they existed as two separate beings, though the gulf between Human and Dragonish understanding was as measureless as the depths of the Rift storm, yet it seemed to Hualiama that a delicate yet unbreakable magical chain had come to link her heart to the Dragon’s third heart. When had that transpired? Sometime during her months of one-sided caring for Grandion? A shared fate which had drawn her to him before she ever knew his name? A destiny which lay together, beyond the Isles?
All she knew was that their hearts beat as one, and that the rhythm of that pulse was her life, throbbing out a miraculous, unstoppable torrent of magic, until her heart could bear no more …
The Dragon made a sound like a low, crooning sob, and when he spoke, it was with raw, quivering emotion. He declared, “Though it flies against every current of reason, I swear that I shall do everything in my power to aid and honour your oath, Hualiama of Fra’anior–out of my free will as a creature of flame and magic–for the gift of life must be honoured by all creatures under the twin suns, lest we fall into the Cloudlands and be lost forever.”
All the Island-World must marvel at these vows.
Magic swelled and undulated between them like the breath of a dawn wind misting the surface of a terrace lake. No breath would pass Hualiama’s throat. For a moment the veil of the unseen and unknowable seemed to draw aside, granting her a glimpse of the world-spanning ramifications of their simple words, a multi-dimensional tapestry of fate drawing together in a single time and place, lending now the infinite complexity of a universe of possibility. All would change. The Nameless Man’s cusp of history was already receding into the past, immutable.
Unthinking, in Dragonish, she whispered, I thank thee, noble Dragon.
My soul-song gladdens the very stars, gracious Hualiama.
And so, having secured Grandion’s agreement to hide as far up the narrowing crack as he possibly could, the place where he said a trickle of water entered his cave, Lia returned–nay, fled–to the monastery to prepare her hydrogen bomb. Ten monks had worked for hours on gluing together sacks ten feet long and seven feet tall, connecting them with long hoses of hollow chengis vine.
Master Jo’el showed her the fuse he had braided and prepared. “It needs another two hours to dry,” he explained. “You’ll have five minutes after you light this to get as far away from that cave as possible. Do you have the hydrogen still? Enough meriatite stone and acid? Bellows and a pump?”
“All is prepared, Master.”
“Ja’al will help you set up the still. I want no-one else setting foot on the Holy Isle, for if that Dragon should seek revenge, we must minimise our transgression.”
“Aye, Master.”
She dared not speak of what had transpired between her and the beast. It was too fresh, too fragile to risk, trembling like a baby bird within her breast.
“Three hours of darkness remain. By dawn, be undercover. The sacks will take hours to fill with that small still. Take heart. Perhaps tomorrow evening, or the day after, you shall be ready. Pray Ra’aba does not return before that hour to complete his evil labours.”
Working rapidly, Hualiama and Ja’al ferried the necessary equipment over to Ha’athior Island. She worried about Flicker. Gi’ishior was a huge flight for a dragonet. Though dragonets were quick, they did not enjoy the stamina of Lesser Dragons. Flicker had estimated it would take him two or three days to reach Gi’ishior. He would stop at the hidden monasteries to rest. With one eye glued to the skies for Dragon-sign, Ja’al and Lia lugged their equipment around the treacherous path to the avalanche site. They stuffed everything down the hole and dragged the huge bags of Dragonship material to their desired locations along the tunnel.
Ja’al peered over her shoulder. “So, this is a hydrogen still?”
Lia nodded, biting her tongue as she concentrated on assembling the parts. “I’ll rest the acid bulb on this little stove to warm it gently, which speeds the reaction. Then I’ll drop chunks of meriatite into the acid where they’ll bubble away, and in the time it takes to toss a few ralti sheep at the Jade moon–hydrogen gas. This valve controls the gas outlet into this bag here, and the foot-pump drives the gas into the pipes leading to the sacks. Clear?”
“You know what? You’re weird.”
“I’m what?”
“Weird. What kind of Princess knows how to patch Dragonships and assemble a hydrogen still?”
“I keep telling you, I’m a royal ward–an imposter. Not a real Princess at all.”
“Royalty is an accident of birth,” said Ja’al, unexpectedly dropping a kiss on her cheek. “Chalcion may be a brute of a father and a respectable King, but I can guarantee he has no clue what a treasure he has in you.”
And he departed, leaving Lia to smile in bemusement, touching her cheek with a fingertip.
“Sooooo,” crooned Grandion, drawing out the word suggestively.
“He’s a monk. A friend. More like a brother, really.”
She babbled with the skill of the most empty-headed parakeet! Lia knew that the Dragon would not believe a single word.
On cue, he added, “Indeed, and I can safely reveal that I’m an overgrown windroc in disguise.”
Hualiama stamped her foot with unconvincing outrage. “Grandion! Ja’al is sworn to the Great Dragon’s service with vows of chastity, fidelity and service–”
“So that was a perfectly chaste kiss?”
“Aye.”
“Then why’s your little heart beating so fast?”
From her reading about Dragons, Lia knew their senses were many times acuter than those of Humans. It beggared belief–he could hear her heartbeat from down there? “It’s irritation–with you,” she retorted, bending low to blow on her little stove. The heat felt about right. Now to add the meriatite …
“Hualiama, why did the monk call your father a brute?”
Flip that Dragon over an Island, now he was suddenly full of questions–and none of them easy ones.
Hualiama went very still, transported to another time and place. Her sister Fyria, sneering, ‘Father never wanted you, little Lia. That’s why he hates you. It was Mother who insisted on adopting you. None of us wanted you, but she made us.’
“Father has a punishment board in his office,” she said, in a dull, lifeless voice. She tested the release valve cautiously. Not enough pressure, yet, although the meriatite was bubbling merrily. “It’s a square of wood covered in sharpened dowels. When I have done wrong, which is often, the punishment is to kneel on that board, for hours. Or he beats me, and my mother. When he’s drunk–”
“You stand between him and your mother, wishing he would beat you, rather.”
At first, Hualiama thought he had read her deepest feelings, but then she realised Grandion must be talking about himself. Could it be that they shared this secret shame of a father both loved and feared, who demanded respect but often did not deserve it, who lashed out at the most unexpected moments to tear a family apart? Suddenly, he seemed not a vast, serpentine predator, but a friend with whom she could share confidences.
“I should’ve stood on him,” said Grandion.
“Aye? Yet I love him, Grandion. Isn’t that the strangest thing?”
“No,” returned the Dragon, his voice now as mellifluous as the tones of a Fra’aniorian pan-flute. “No, for love transcends woe. Sometimes it is pure, like the stars of a moonless night, and sometimes it is as clouded as a storm, but it is still love.”
Such were the storms that lashed her heart.
After a time, he added, “I’m sorry I made you cry.”
And now he heard the drip of her tears above the chuckle of the bubbling still? Hualiama sniffed hugely. Pestiferous, perceptive Dragon!
“How many hours until your bomb is ready?” asked Grandion.
“Too many.”
Below, talons clicked on stone as Grandion shifted restlessly. “You have told me stories, and sung me songs, Hualiama, but I regret I was a feral beast for much o
f that time, unthinking and unheeding. I would know the tale of your life. Would you tell me of the heart of a girl who scorns death to comfort a lost Dragon?”
Hope lodged in her breast, yet it was hope bound to a disconcerting knowledge. This Dragon would not kill her. Whatever magic had emerged to ensnare them, it was far more dangerous than that.
Chapter 18: A Dragon’s Oath
ON Her THIRD strike of the spark-stone, the fuse caught. “Take cover!” Lia yelled, even though she had already warned Grandion four times. His muffled laughter chased her into the depthless night.
Although only the tiny pinpoint of the White moon was visible in the sky and enormous Iridith was hidden behind Ha’athior’s looming bulk, there was plenty of ambient light to help Lia traverse the cliff. She hurried with the zest of someone who knew a large volume of highly explosive hydrogen gas was about to ignite. Scrabble for bushes and handholds. Keep the feet moving, but take each step with care. Wish for wings that could bear her aloft if she took just one misstep …
How long was that fuse? Was Master Jo’el correct about the five minutes? She waited.
When it came, the detonation was disappointing.
Thump. Just a dull concussion conducted through the ground to her feet, although Lia did see a flash of light briefly illuminate the volcanic cone to her right hand. Dragonets? Lia paused in surprise. Hundreds of dragonets lined the volcano’s rim to watch proceedings. How did they know?
She turned. Nothing.
“Oh, Islands’ sakes …” Lia’s voice trailed off.
First, there came a sharp cracking sound as though lightning had struck from within the Island. Then, a deep groan, as if a mile-high door had been forced open for the first time in millennia. And now, a roar as a piece of Ha’athior Island slipped away from the mainland, sluggishly at first, but the noise rapidly escalated into a thunder that rolled away over the Cloudlands until it was lost in that immensity.